Giorgi Margvelashvili

Giorgi Margvelashvili (4 September 1969-) was President of the Republic of Georgia from 17 November 2013 to 16 December 2018, succeeding Mikheil Saakashvili and preceding Salome Zurabishvili.

Biography
Giorgi Margvelashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union in 1969, and he worked as a mountain guide for a travel agency during the 1990s before working for the National Democratic Institute. He became a political and societal commentator, and he served as rector of the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs from 2000 to 2006 and from 2010 to 2012. In 2012, he became Minister of Education and Science in Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili's cabinet, and the Ivanishvili-led Georgian Dream coalition nominated Margvelashvili (an independent) as its presidential candidate in the October 2013 presidential election, which he won with 62% of the vote. He was a divisive figure in the ruling party, as he opposed his party's role in its efforts to weaken the presidency; in October 2017, he reluctantly signed the constitutional amendment, as it was in the interests of his country. He retired at the end of his term in 2018.